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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23519149">Sassafras and Summer Shandy</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/foux_dogue/pseuds/foux_dogue'>foux_dogue</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>80 to 90 percent fluff guaranteed, And Sylvain being a horndog for Felix, But seriously it’s lighthearted, Conservatively rated, Domestic bliss paired with the occasional tantrum, Hint: remove blunt objects from your home, How to raise a child with a major Crest, Kid Fic, M/M, Some Explicit Language</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 14:02:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>9,484</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23519149</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/foux_dogue/pseuds/foux_dogue</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Are you angry with me?” Felix asks. His voice is twenty different versions of a whisper paired with the tail-end of something heartbreakingly boyish that Sylvain hasn’t heard from him in years. </p><p>“No,” Sylvain quickly answers. It’s quick because he’s honest. He isn’t angry. He’s perplexed. Bewildered. Stupefied. And sure, between the two of them and all of that messy chaos that’d come with the war, he supposes that it isn’t so farfetched to believe that they’d left some scorched earth behind. </p><p>“I’m just surprised,” is what he offers next, combing a strand of Felix’s dark hair behind his ear and swallowing, with careful desperation, <em>darling, out of any of us, how could it have possibly been</em> you<em>?</em></p><p>Or: The dukes of Fraldarius rethink their postwar obligations when Felix’s five-year-old natural daughter comes knocking at their door.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>185</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Eugenie, Called Genie</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The war is over. Even now, five years later, Sylvain can’t help but find the idea utterly insane. There’s always been a war, he thinks; with the Empire, with Duscur, with the Empire again, and interspersed with hair-raising incursions from Sreng and Dagda and Sreng, and Sreng, and Sreng. But Sreng doesn’t do that sort of thing anymore. They <em>farm</em>. Wheat, mostly — a special breed borrowed from the depths of Duscur’s hidden stock that takes well to rocky soil. It makes good bread. Nutty. Sylvain has sackfuls of it sent to him on a regular basis, and eats it paired with that cheese Ingrid shares with him when she’s feeling particularly diplomatic: hard, sunny-colored stuff that leaves his fingertips smelling like a barnyard when he’s finished with his lunch.</p><p>Felix hates it. Not the bread — it’s his favorite, too. Of course it is. He’s always found whiter breads too sweet, which is insane, too, if Sylvain’s taking stock of the matter. Fruits, iced cookies, sure; sweet. He gets it. But <em>bread</em>? Some days he’s convinced that Felix would eat soil if it would keep him going. Until that’s possible, however, he forgoes most of it — and Galatean cheese first and foremost, always snubbing his nose at the stuff with a perfectly feline pout — everything inedible by his definition except for red meat and sweltering peppers and Sreng bread. Sreng bread full of flour grown in Gautier soil, to be exact, or soil that had been called Gautier before Sylvain had given it over to them in exchange for a pair of silver rings that had made Fodlan’s northern border a little shorter, but doubled its number of dukes.</p><p>It’s insane. Well, no. That’s a cruel word. <em>Ridiculous</em> is better.</p><p>“Ridiculous,” Sylvain decides with a bolder confidence aloud. He rubs his fingers over the plush of his beard as he does. His reflection looks back at him, ruddy and sun-darkened and <em>hairy</em>, and seems to agree. He’d never really meant to grow a beard. It had started with laziness — an overslept morning followed with an afternoon of meetings shared with some Fhirdiad entourage that hadn’t allowed him the luxury of his usual ablutions. Felix had said it made him look like some lousy cut-purse in the dinner that had come after, and so of course Sylvain had become immediately devoted to the idea of growing it longer just to see what other grumpy nicknames he could earn from him.</p><p>Now he has a beard. A proper, bloody <em>beard</em>. He’s cropped his hair a little shorter than he used to wear it in some sort of recompense. And of course he’s cocksure enough to think that he always looks quite dashing, but even Felix seems to have grown accustomed to the way that it rasps against his skin. Sometimes, when the Duke Fraldarius is completely engrossed in something he’s reading, his lips turned into a subconscious frown (as opposed to the usual deliberate one), he even scrunches it between his fingers as if he’s petting his favorite hound. There is no doubt, therefore, that Sylvain will wear a beard for the rest of his lucky-as-sin life.</p><p>So the war is over. Plenty more has happened to Fodlan aside from Sylvain growing a beard. They’ve erased a hundred different borders, for one. It’s taken awhile, but people are starting to call everything just <em>Fodlan</em>, finally, instead of <em>that-there-that-used-to-be-Leicester</em> and <em>the old Empire</em>. In other circumstances Sylvain supposes the people would have been bitter about it — earning new neighbors and losing bits and pieces of their own estates for the trouble. But it hadn’t just been a war, it had been <em>The War</em>, and everyone had been so tired of it by the end that they’d all been contented enough with the idea that some sort of Blaiddyd was on the throne — familiar, sure, even if he seemed a little unhinged — and with the Church’s backing. The king’s marriage to the archbishop had made it even better.</p><p>A few other things had happened. Sylvain had nearly gotten fat, for one. People celebrated after the end of a war, of course, and he’d never been a stranger to celebration. Six months of mead and revelry, and one day he’d turned himself sideways to a mirror and had been horrified to find that his stomach had taken on a new and thoroughly barreled shape. He’d thrown himself back into the training grounds at that revelation — still at Garreg Mach, then, and him somehow having convinced Dimitri and Byleth that he had enough brains to be useful in their work of building a new world. The trouble of it, however, had been that the war was over. Swinging a lance around at the memory of defeated enemies had lost all of its allure. So he started running rings around the monastery instead. In the morning, before the dawn, at night. Another half-year later and he’d sweated out each ounce of all of that luxurious weight.</p><p>Running a channel into the soil around Garreg Mach gave him a lot of time to think. He thought about a thousand different ways to diffuse the situation in Sreng, firstly; diplomacy, promises, good intentions. The idea of simply retreating to his frozen motherland to die in a fruitless quarrel would have otherwise strangled him in his sleep. He started to untangle some of the loosest strings of his self-loathing, too. It was good — would’ve been better if he’d simply spoken it aloud to someone empathetic instead, but good, at least, to finally look the nasty chimera of his broken ego in the eye. As he’d pulled on that knot, his heels digging furrows into the earth, he’d come to another realization as well: that he was love in Felix, as dour and prickly as he was, and that he was desperate for his company now that the man had retreated to his duty north.</p><p>It was a perplexing puzzle to solve, he’d thought that first night, sweat-drenched as he finished his newest lap around the monastery and his stomach in knots at the prospect of living through the quiet agony of unrequited love. Some trickster god must have heard him thinking the words. Two weeks later Felix had been summoned by their dizzy-eyed king to detail the developments of his work in mending hurt feelings between the northernmost bits of the old Kingdom and their Leicester counterparts.</p><p>As soon as Sylvain had set eyes on him — the smug little bastard, his hair already mended from the roughshod way he’d used to cut it during the war, and dressed in a duke’s finery as if it didn’t even bother him — he’d felt like he was going to die. It had never been like that before. They’d fought arm-in-arm at the end of the war. He’d seen him all the time. Hell, they’d slept together, some; not in the ways he wanted, but so that they could keep warm. And he’d known him forever, right? So why was it that he could hardly choke out a greeting with that year that had kept them apart?</p><p>In any case, it would have been a miserable mess well-tailored to Sylvain’s miserable mess of a life if Felix hadn’t invited him to dinner, but he had. And then they’d drunk some wine, and Sylvain had stopped biting his tongue when he talked to him. Three bottles later and Felix was in his lap, their dinner cold and forgotten as they both babbled teary-eyed <em>but I loved you too, you fool. Why didn’t you just say something?</em></p><p>So he married him. He did plenty of other things in the time that came in between. Wrote Felix poems and stuffed them in the sleeves of his jackets set out for the day after; saccharine, silly things that made the fresh-forged duke blush into the tips of his ears. Helped build a peace treaty with Sreng thanks in part to the holy trinity of Dimitri and Byleth and Dedue; talked his way out of his inheritance by insisting that the northmen deserved the bits of Gautier that his father had taken from them. Made love to Felix in the greenhouse, in the stables; in the dusty shells of their old rooms and in their forgotten classroom, even, making the petrified tables squeak and groan as they careened with debaucherous excitement.</p><p>Eventually they all left the monastery behind. Byleth and Dimitri marched the bulk of their ilk back to Fhirdiad, a capital once more. Sylvain followed Felix to Fraldarius. <em>Marry me</em>, he begged him as soon as they’d urged their horses into the woods. Felix had turned that new pink shade of his and blustered a nearly inaudible response strung together with words like “nonsense” and “fool”. Six days later their unhurried ride eastward had ended in the duchy stables, where Felix had greeted his footmen by introducing them to his new husband. <em>You know Sylvain</em>, he’d amended with another fiery blush, clearing his throat and storming into the castle without another word. Sylvain had lingered behind, grinning like a cat bequeathed a creamery, and had merely winked at all of those old, familiar faces who whispered things like <em>well, I don’t know what else I expected.</em></p><p>“My lord,” a voice peeps from outside Sylvain’s bedroom door. “Master Fraldarius has requested that I remind you that your breakfast has been prepared.”</p><p>Sylvain jumps from his daydreaming to his feet, the stool of his dressing table squeaking across the floorboards as he hunts out his slacks. Better not to have his ass out in Fraldarius, he’s learned in his four-year residency; that’s the trick of being <em>dukely</em>.</p><p>“Thank you, Batty!” he replies sweetly. The woman groans behind the door at the nickname. It’s not really her name, of course; that was <em>Beatrice</em> and on occasion, in those moments spent gossiping with the kitchen girls, <em>Betty</em>. But when Beatrice had been a much younger creature Sylvain had misheard her when she’d introduced herself, and him still in those pre-pubescent years which allow for innocent misunderstandings, and the name had stuck. Poor old girl.</p><p>“There’s rashers,” she informs him brusquely. “But if you aren’t down to eat them soon I’m givin’ ‘em to the dogs.”</p><p>Sylvain laughs loud enough for her to hear as he shoves his arms through his shirt and fiddles quickly with the buttons. His boots come last, still caked with mud from yesterday’s visit to one of his new mills. He was supposed to have left them in the hall to be cleaned when he last retired, but then Felix had been wearing those dashing new spectacles of his for his nighttime reading, and who was Sylvain but a man easily distracted by shiny things?</p><p>He swings open the door with a clanging capriciousness and advances wide-paced down the hall. It’s important to be quick. Batty isn’t the sort to lie when she chides him. And Sylvain’s fond of Felix’s foxhounds, sure, but not fond enough to give them his breakfast. Dreaming of crispy bacon and fresh-picked apples, he nearly makes it to the crooked stairs leading into the kitchens when — speak of the devil — that navy-haired minx takes it on himself to slow his step. Felix is a dark smudge against the green field trapped in the diamonds of the leaded window between them. Sylvain steps a little closer to take advantage of some well-intentioned spying.</p><p>The duke isn’t alone. As always, there’s Gerard beside him in the yard, his ancient, knobby-fingered valet who’d had a bit more hair back when they’d been little boys. They’re accompanied by a woman as well, judging by the billow of her skirts, and the carriage that had brought her there. It’s a simple thing: just one horse. The gentry generally require at least four horses for their morning rides. That makes Sylvain feel a bit better. Felix’s generally too prickly before lunch for people like the gentry.</p><p>Most likely she’s one of the women from the village down the hill, Sylvain thinks. Sylvain himself has worked with plenty of them in these years spent with Felix piecing the duchy back together again and then pushing it from whole into prosperous. In fact, just five days prior he’d spent an afternoon-turned-late-evening with the master of the local letterpress, bewitched by all of the ink and clanking machinery that had transformed one of Dimtri’s pamphlets (some sort of five-year commemorative to do with the war) into a dozen and then more.</p><p>Sylvain breaks from another moment of musing to watch the woman part slightly backwards from Felix and Gerard. The sunflower yellow of her skirts smears across the glass. Sylvain finds it hard to pay her too much attention — is more distracted by Felix’s lithe shape and the way he’s bouncing the toe of his left boot against the ground. He does that when he’s nervous, Sylvain knows. It makes him frown. He’s already dreamed up a dozen different reasons for it — rot in the new harvests, or maybe beetles in the orchards — when Felix returns his gaze through the window. There’s no way for Felix to know that he’s there, hidden as Sylvain is by the sun and the glass and the castle’s shadow, and yet somehow Sylvain is convinced that he does. And so Sylvain turns to hunt him out, because if there’s one thing that he knows about Felix, it’s that he only turns to others for help when he’s truly desperate.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“... in the guest wing for now,” Sylvain hears Felix finish as he rounds onto the landing above the steps leading into the entrance hall. </p><p>“Thank you,” comes a woman’s voice. It lilts into sweetness with a quick segue. “Right, then, Genie. What a long trip we’ve had. Come follow this nice man and have a little rest.”</p><p>“I don’t want to,” a brassy retort answers. “I’m not <em>tired</em>.”</p><p>So here’s something else that’s insane, or ridiculous, or whatever word Sylvain was using before; that stubborn little voice ringing in the rafters belongs to a <em>little girl</em>. She’s clinging to the woman’s skirts, no higher than her hip, and is dressed in a blue checkered sundress with a muddy hem and a crooked-tied bow around the waist. All of it casts an image that spells out plainly <em>mischievous</em> and would be, in older children, <em>a problem</em>. Two pairs of amber eyes swing up to meet Sylvain as he quickly descends the staircase. His breath catches in his throat from it, although he’s not so certain why.</p><p>“Master Gautier,” Gerard welcomes him, genteel in his duty even bowed forward as he is in his failed attempt to coax the girl away from the woman’s heels. Sylvain can hardly blame her; Gerard does look like a bit of a vulture, all hobble-shouldered as he is and with the shiny paleness of his bald, spot-speckled head. Sylvain plasters on one of his award-winning smiles in order to give it a go instead.</p><p>“Hello there,” he drawls easily, his fingers dancing down his chest to make sure he hadn’t missed any buttons in his eagerness to attend to his now-abandoned breakfast. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”</p><p>“Hardly not,” the woman answers. She’s matched his cheer with a sing-song of her own. Felix turns slightly towards him. He’s got the look of a thoroughly bedraggled cat just dragged despite its best efforts from drowning itself in a well. So <em>that’s</em> good, Sylvain thinks dryly; certainly no disaster <em>here</em>. </p><p>“Mercedes LeConte,” she adds with the brandish of her gloved hand. Sylvain sweeps forward to accept it with all of his usual pomp.</p><p>“Sylvain,” he replies, not bothering with what Gerard had already said. “And what a fine name. We have a Mercedes of our own, you know.”</p><p>“Do you?” this Mercedes twitters. “Whatever a shame that we are not one in the same. You are the second duke, I take it.”</p><p>He grins at the way she sums up all of the awkward social niceties that have been following them around since their marriage. One might take some offense at being second-best, but at least she doesn’t call him <em>duchess</em>.</p><p>“The second,” he concedes with the bow of his head. His eyes skirt over at Felix when he does. Felix looks like he’s both relieved that Sylvain has come to his aid and mortified by the very idea of his existence, which is...<em> troubling</em>. Sylvain decides it’s probably easier to ingratiate himself with the sulking toddler at Mercedes’ skirts instead of the adult version to which he’s married.</p><p>“And who are you?” he asks sweetly, bending into a crouch to make himself more level with her. The little girl puckers her lips into a scowl. She does it with her fingers as well, forming two (quick frankly impressive) fists at either side of the bow she’s already started to untie, and apparently not for the first time.</p><p>“This is Eugenie,” Mercedes informs him. She tousles the girl’s dark curls as she says it, which only deepens little Eugenie’s stormy grimace. “Say hello, Genie.”</p><p>“‘Lo,” Eugenie mutters, her eyes fixed stubbornly on the scuffed toes of Sylvain’s boots.</p><p>“That’s a pretty name,” Sylvain tells her. He knows how to play this game. The other Mercedes has given him plenty of training in their visits to Fhirdiad. Nearly every orphan that she and Annette have taken under their wing has bested him in at least one tree-branch-swordfight. That’s the sort of thing that at least prepares you for proper introductions, if not also for bruised shins. “Much better than <em>Syl-vain</em>, don’t you think?” He crinkles his nose. She snorts a little at the suggestion, but doesn’t yet lift her eyes. “And how old are you?”</p><p>She wrenches the ribbon belted around her waist, giving the long-tortured bow another tug and finally sending it unfurled. Then she strings it around her shoulders, shifting from side to side as Mercedes sighs — no doubt biting back another request for her to <em>just stop fidgeting, won’t you?</em></p><p>“Four and three quarters,” the girl whispers finally.</p><p>“Five with the turn of the season,” Mercedes answers. Felix clears his throat. Sylvain is quite aware that he’s missing the punchline to whatever joke they seem to be sharing. It’s starting to be a little annoying.</p><p>“Four and three quarters,” Sylvain wonders aloud. “Why, that’s plenty old enough for a proper meeting, don’t you think? Of course, it will be terribly long. And <em>boring</em>. And poor Gerard here will have to put away those cakes he’s made for littler girls when they come to visit, but no matter. Such is our duty — responsibility and all that. Let’s all head to the library and begin our discussion, shall we?”</p><p>Eugenie scrunches her plump cheeks into another take on a frown.</p><p>“Or the little miss can come with me,” Gerard chimes in, clever fellow that he is. “We’ve just had some blueberry scones fresh from the ovens and no one to eat them.”</p><p>“...very well,” Eugenie sighs with all of the affect of a tortured dowager. Sylvain can’t help but smile. Mercedes pats her on the shoulder before pushing her gently in Gerard’s direction. The valet extends his well-worn palm in her direction but the girl simply stomps past him instead, making her own path towards the smell of baking bread and burnished sugar.</p><p>“Gods,” the woman whispers once Eugenie and her new serving-man disappear down the kitchen stairs. “That girl.”</p><p>Sylvain stands, brushing his hands over his trousers in some old reflex from back when they’d still lived in muddy camps and dusty ruins. He purses his lips for his next quip, but Mercedes beats him to the punch.</p><p>“You’ll take her, of course.”</p><p>That isn’t what he’s expecting. He feels his brow furrow tight.</p><p>“Of course,” Felix snaps tightly.</p><p>“<em>What</em>?”</p><p>This isn’t the most delicate version of a response, but Sylvain is quickly coming to the conclusion that he’s a full mile behind whatever finish line they’re barreling towards. And he hasn’t had his breakfast, firstly, and was quite frankly not aware that Felix was in the market for <em>godsforsaken children</em>. For his part, at least, Felix looks an entirely new shade of miserable.</p><p>“You haven’t told him,” Mercedes observes. She’s lost her coquettishness in exchange for something far more sardonic. “Because you didn’t believe me,” she then guesses aloud. “I understand. I’m sure it’s not the first letter of its kind you’ve received. Desperate times for little fatherless girls, what comes after a war. But now you’ve seen her. There’s no doubt in it, is there? To be honest with you I thought it was as fairytale at first myself. But goodness, she even has your eyes. And your Crest, moreover. I don’t know much about that sort of thing, but I’ve seen it firsthand. Cracked a kitchen table in half swinging around a broom handle. So congratulations, I suppose, and gods help you for it — the little monster.”</p><p>It takes awhile, but then it clicks. Sylvain glances between Felix and the woman and Felix again and gives them both another disarming smile, because he’s certain if he doesn’t he’ll most certainly topple over.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“Are you angry with me?” Felix asks later — much later, after Mercedes LeConte has gone and left them alone to whatever’s lurking between them in the library. His voice is twenty different versions of a whisper, paired with the tail-end of something heartbreakingly boyish that Sylvain hasn’t heard from him in years.</p><p>“No,” Sylvain quickly answers. It’s quick because he’s honest. He isn’t angry. He’s perplexed. Bewildered. Stupefied. And sure, between the two of them and all of that messy chaos that’d come with the war, he supposes that it isn’t so farfetched to believe that they’d left some scorched earth behind.</p><p>“I’m just surprised,” is what he offers next, combing a strand of Felix’s dark hair behind his ear and swallowing, with careful desperation, <em>darling, out of all of us, how could it have</em> possibly <em>been</em> you<em>?</em></p><p>Quite honestly, it defies mathematics altogether. By his measure Sylvain should have founded a whole upstart house of his own thanks to his self-destructive and far-roaming appreciation of breasts and other womanly parts from ages eighteen through twenty-three. But the arithmetic had always ended, somehow, in a zero; zero bitter letters with a baby’s fingerprints stamped inside, and zero fathers bearing pitchforks for him or, even worse, marriage proposals. In the end it had been his greatest victory: the satisfaction of knowing with certainly that his damned Crest would end alongside Gautier, that wretched frozen place plowed over by Sreng once more.</p><p>“It was <em>before</em>,” Felix groans. It’s not the first time he’s said it, or at least not in so many words. He pulls back from Sylvain’s gentle fingers to cage his own over his face.</p><p>“I know,” Sylvain promises. And maybe he should at least be a little perturbed in how all of this has come about, but then he’s always been hopelessly entangled with Felix’s poor behavior. Here’s what else he now knows: Felix, like every other living creature in the Kingdom army, had slept with someone when they’d finally dragged themselves to victory at the end of the war.</p><p>And maybe it would have been better if it’d been Sylvain, but then again Sylvain had been too busy burying himself in his own misery, and so he clearly hadn’t been available for the opportunity. So Felix had settled with some red-haired ingenue instead — only she hadn’t been any of that, except maybe for the color of her hair. The morning after the newly-deflowered Fraldarius had come to a number of different realizations. First, that all of the lust and wanting he’d kept locked tight in the keepsake of his chest had nothing to do with women; second, that Anastasia — called Anya — seemed to understand such a caveat.</p><p><em>No hard feelings</em>, she’d said as she’d left him in the bed of their rented room after she’d pulled on a pair of riding breeches and braided up her hair. <em>What a woman</em>, he might have thought, impressed by her brash indifference and the proud set of her shoulders. Maybe afterwards he’d even thought of her fondly from time to time, if in that sort of way that one remembers a dish that they’d not truly had the taste for, but that had nonetheless been so expertly made. After all, Felix hated the very theoretical <em>idea</em> of sweets. It didn’t mean that there wasn’t something wonderful about a spoonful of sugar from time to time.</p><p>“If she would have just <em>told</em> me,” Felix continues through his fingers. Sylvain just nods his head. Yes, if she would have just told him, Felix would have no doubt done something horribly gallant — given her the duchy, even, if just to apologize for his misstep of being selfish for once in his life. Worse, maybe he would have married her, and neither of them keen to the idea. So perhaps that’s why she hadn’t, and Sylvain knows that it isn’t right, but that doesn’t mean that it’s wrong, either. It’s just the sort of thing that happens in the penumbra of a war.</p><p>But of course the war had ended. It was now rather long over. And Anastasia had lived a fine life for herself in the peacetime that had come after, unbeknownst to all of them until she’d had the misfortune of picking a wild-eyed stallion from Nuvelle’s stockyards. It’d tossed her, Mercedes had told them; and gods, there was no one who could ride like Anya, but maybe none of that mattered in moments like that. No doubt Anya would have said that she deserved it herself for not having properly broken the beast, or so said Mercedes. But that was the sort of woman that she was — and those sorts of women didn’t tend to have many hangers-on that could look after their fearsome daughters when they had the misfortune of an untimely demise. Mercedes had liked her well enough — she was a good friend, she’d said, in the times that mattered — but that didn’t make Mercedes a mother, and it certainly didn’t make her a duke.</p><p>All of this — even the sad parts, and the desperate ones — makes sense to Sylvain. He likes to think that he’s an objective man. And he loves Felix; irrevocably, irrationally, to the extent that maybe he’s no different than Anya crawling up onto that mean bastard of a horse. So of course he’ll love Felix’s wild-eyed daughter, too, and even if it kills him, although he’d prefer it didn’t precisely in the same degree that it’s starting to appear as though it will.</p><p>“Ah, Fe,” he sighs, shaking his head. Then he glances over his shoulder and through the windowpanes to catch sight of her. There’s Gerard as well, gripping a torch in his hand to give the little would-be duchess light for her important work of beating a bush to death with a very large stick. Sylvain can hear her even inside the castle: <em>hra, hra, hra!</em></p><p>“Shit,” he laughs. It’s with a fond finality that tempts the man to finally peek at him through his fingers. “You godsdamned Fraldariuses.” </p>
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<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Genie Stages a Duel</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’d taken Sylvain a while to fall in love with Felix, but he’d always loved his hair. Maybe there’s something backwards about that. Then again, Sylvain’s done plenty of things backwards in his life. There’d been a good enough reason for this one, at least. Everyone in Gautier was red, or brown, or some muddy in-between. Sylvain’s mother, an import from the south, had been blonde, but only blonde in a way that made it seem like she’d been drained of any proper sort of color. She’d been blotting paper for his father’s red hair, as so proven by his two ruddy-headed sons. The monotony of it all had made the occasional Fraldarius visit to the border a very special occasion indeed. They’d looked like painted dolls of the same breed that Sylvain’s cousins hoarded over in Fhirdiad: made of porcelain always cool to the touch, and with features drawn in fantastical tones meant to capture the artist’s whimsy. Real people didn’t look like that, Sylvain had told himself, and yet there they’d been — Rodrigue, Felix, Glenn, and each of them more beautiful in their own strange way.</p><p>To be honest, Felix had been the worst off within the trio. Glenn had inherited his father’s blue eyes, whereas Felix had been stuck with his mother’s brown. Blue on black on white on Faerghus blue — it had been incredible. No wonder Ingrid had turned her betrothed into a storybook hero — no wonder <em>all of them</em> had. Even as a little boy Sylvain had sensed the silver medal of his second place against the elder Fraldarius son. Felix was stuck with bronze. Maybe that was why he was always crying all of the time.</p><p>In any case, Ingrid had Glenn, and so Sylvain had inherited Felix. At seven, Sylvain had found Felix’s five-year-old clinginess absolutely dreadful. And it wasn’t just because he was always crying, but that he was always snotty, too — red-cheeked, sniffling until he was hiccuping, and dragging his nose against his sleeves, and whimpering at the slightest hint of being left behind. Maybe Sylvain would’ve been cruel to him in that shortsighted sort of way that all little boys are, from time to time, if his own brother hadn’t already perfected the art through dedicated experimentation.</p><p>So that had been stage one of Sylvain’s lifelong love affair: tolerance, if stiff-lipped, and rewarded only with the opportunity to occasionally pet Felix’s soft hair. Not that it hadn’t been worth it. The stuff was incredible: thick, silky, shimmering like opal even under the dullest light. Felix had fawned under the attention. Maybe Sylvain would have found an expedited path to stage three (love-struck) if not for their fathers coming to the realization that there was something odd about Felix always running around in clumsy-made braids, and the fact that Sylvain had been the one to put them there. The Fraldariuses made their visits more lean after that.</p><p>Looking back on it now, Sylvain realizes that maybe he was the last one to know that his heart’d been tied to Felix’s from the very start. Certainly his father must have seen it to have acted the way he had. At the time he’d guessed it’d been because Felix had been so sensitive — and with sensitivity being a contagion of the worst sort, according to the Margrave — but perhaps instead he’d had visions of an axe severing the last branch of the Gautier family tree.</p><p>Well. But that tree was the sort that was due a heavy pruning, as far as Sylvain’s concerned.</p><p>“It’s just that we’re already so far behind,” Felix complains. Sylvain nods, although to be honest he hasn’t been paying the closest attention to his husband’s morning soliloquy. Generally the subject lands on their day ahead: reviews of the red and black ink of the duchy’s coffers, perhaps, or — if Felix is particularly unlucky — a warning regarding whatever southern-started envoy they were tasked with teaching the art of kingdom-keeping. Today, however, the duke is fixated on a thick-spine book spread across his lap. He’s thumbed through two-thirds of it already, and seems to find the remainder particularly daunting. Sylvain hums his heartfelt agreement and continues on in his task of brushing every strand of Felix’s hair.</p><p>“At her age she should have a large vocabulary,” Felix insists. “This says that she should be able to rhyme.”</p><p>Sylvain pauses to do battle with a knotted whorl of hair he no doubt knitted in place himself the night before. Felix makes an annoyed little sound, although Sylvain isn’t sure if it has to do with the sudden tug of his brush or the way that Sylvain hasn’t yet supplied a full report on Eugenie’s loquaciousness. Sylvain feels his lips quirk into a grin, although he knows he’ll likely pay for it later.</p><p>“Fe,” he chides him. “I’m not certain if <em>you’re</em> able to rhyme.”</p><p>“You find this funny, do you?”</p><p>Sylvain leans forward to press a kiss into the pale parting of Felix’s hair.</p><p>“Yes,” he admits into the sweet-musk scent of him. “I heard her say plenty of things to poor old Gerrie yesterday.” He thinks back on the memory for a moment, peeking at Felix through the mirror as he does. Felix scowls back at him — he knows the look. It’s all bluster. It’s one of his favorites, frankly. “<em>I hate apricots</em>, among others. She’s got both the discerning palate and the vocabulary to make it clear, darling. It’s alright.”</p><p>Felix huffs a noisy breath through his nose and flips through another set of pages. Sylvain’s fingers wander, combing through his hair themselves and taking a detour to skim the delicate shell of his ear and the soft lobe beneath. He’s all coiled muscle below that. Sylvain transitions into his most important task of teasing all of that clenched tension loose. The press of his fingers against the knots in his husband’s shoulders doesn’t stop Felix from grumbling, although Sylvain at least earns the victory of a poorly-hidden smile and the flash of his dark lashes as he closes his eyes.</p><p>“I want to do it right,” Felix mutters once Sylvain’s worked him honest. It peels back the cheery little petals in Sylvain’s chest to reveal something a bit more sad. He knows, of course; Felix has always wanted to do things right, if maybe in only the most complicated ways. Sylvain sinks into his haunches to hug him through the back of his chair. His eyes are molten in the mirror. Sylvain stares back at them, willing each and every ounce of his good nature into his gaze as he props his chin against Felix’s right shoulder.</p><p>“Your father was nearly as terrible as mine,” he tells him, because he knows this is what Felix is getting at. Felix’s lips twitch into the first curve of a frown. “But that doesn’t have anything to do with us. We’ll manage it. We survived the end of the world, didn’t we? This will only be marginally more difficult.”</p><p>Felix cocks his head at that. He looks ready for another debate, but Sylvain silences him by brushing the curtain of his hair away from his neck and planting another kiss there. His pulse thrums against his lips — slow and steady, another one of Felix’s strange little conundrums; always calm even when he isn’t, that sort of thing you train yourself into when you make a career out of killing things for a very long while.</p><p>Sylvain stamps out the dark idea with the nip of his teeth.</p><p>“You know,” he then offers, “it’s not like I was ever opposed to the idea of children. Maybe we just didn’t try hard enough?”</p><p>He wags his brows suggestively at the proposal. Felix turns pink in the mirror, which is, quite frankly, fantastic — that the years haven’t fully taught him to be bawdy. It’s like they were crafted for each other, the way that these stupid little jokes are always taking root in Sylvain’s mind, and how they would never exist in Felix’s world at all if Sylvain wasn’t there to speak them. He’s convinced of it, rather. Yes, and them two sides of a coin: his side a little dingy, and Felix’s over-polished to a mirror shine. Gods. He loves him. It still catches him off guard sometimes.</p><p>“Syl,” Felix protests in that way that isn’t a protest at all. Sylvain grins into the soft skin at the crux of his neck. His nose fills with the bland perfume of their soap. He tastes it on the bow of Felix’s collarbone.</p><p>“Darling,” Sylvain repeats. <em>Precious, love, sweetheart</em> — these are Felix’s new titles, now. For some reason it’s the most trite and old-fashioned words that suit him best. Maybe it’s because somehow he’s able to turn them honest when he hears them after so many years of Sylvain spitting them as fibs to old conquests. Sometimes they even catch — <em>hand me that inkwell, beloved</em>, Felix will say off-handed and Sylvain becomes, if only for a moment, a devoutly religious man.</p><p>Sylvain slips his hands around the bulk of the chair to find the silk of Felix’s dressing robe. It’s taken Sylvain years to convince him to wear these sorts of things. He’d missed the stage when Felix must have still shrugged on his war-clothes when he woke, but he’d snuck his way back into the man’s life just when the duke had resigned himself to dress attire instead. It was all just armor in its own way, Sylvain knew, but that didn’t make it any less preposterous — or unpopular with the cleaning girls cursed with scrubbing his tailcoats after he still insisted on mucking around across the estate dressed well enough to greet foreign kings.</p><p>Lucky for all of them that Sylvain is so deft at taming his husband’s various neuroses, and in this regard in particular, at convincing him to wear a gods-damned pair of trousers and a shirt without a bloody jacket. Or nothing at all, he’d often begged; the robe had been the compromise. He doesn’t mind it too terribly. There’s something divine in how the liquid touch of it grows hot against Felix’s skin — how it inevitably slips from his shoulders when Sylvain takes on his special morning task of brushing his hair.</p><p>He tugs on the sash tied with a clumsy knot at Felix’s waist. Felix catches his eyes in the mirror again. He rolls them, a sigh already on his lips, but they’re turning into a grin, too.</p><p>“I think,” Sylvain then proposes, his voice deep and honeyed, “that you just need a little distraction.”</p><p>The indigo of Felix’s robe is replaced with alabaster in the mirror. Sylvain briefly wonders if he can commission someone to capture the scene for him — paint it inside the gold heart of some sort of lewd locket that he can cherish until he’s bald and toothless. He trails his fingertips over the sharp angles of Felix’s hipbones and wonders if maybe he can —</p><p>They both jump at the sound of three curt toots of a horn blown in the yard outside. Sylvain groans, knowing — and yes, there he goes — that it’ll spook Felix into dressing himself. He leans back against his heels and watches in dismay as Felix rises from his seat and retreats (if hobbling) towards the wardrobe.</p><p>“Cabbage,” Sylvain begs. It’s maybe not the best pet-name for the situation, but he still wins a snicker from Felix as the man hunts for his clothes. He takes a brief detour, smallclothes in hand, to peek behind the curtains of the nearest window.</p><p>“It’s Ingrid,” Felix tells him. Sylvain groans again and leans further backwards against his elbows. The ceiling stares back at him, utterly unmoved by his prostration. “You knew she’d come.”</p><p>“Send her to the stables. That’ll win us a day or two,” Sylvain offers futilely. His heart sinks further as he hears the sound of Felix stepping his feet through his trouser legs. </p><p>“Sylvain.”</p><p>Sylvain pouts, although he doesn’t bother to turn his head in order to point it in Felix’s direction. The duke’s never been so generous with commiseration. And it’s not exactly as though Sylvain’s been suffering from celibacy, although in that moment it certainly feels that way. He sucks in a deep breath, stares at the swirled plaster of the ceiling, and thinks about thoroughly neutered things: the maths of his little mill project, those boots he still needs to clean; Ingrid, somehow, and inexplicably, making the unilateral decision that Felix’s mutually disappointing night of intimacy with a woman had been Sylvain’s idea.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Ingrid, somehow, and inexplicably, has made the unilateral decision that Felix’s mutually disappointing night of intimacy with a woman had been Sylvain’s idea. <em>What did you do</em>, her gemstone eyes snap at him over the stilted niceties of a shared pot of tea; <em>I know that it was you</em>. It wasn’t, of course. He’s given this little conundrum a bit more thought and has come to the conclusion that on the very night of Eugenie’s conception he’d been quite busy getting sick over one too many glasses of that wine he’d found in the cellar of some minor house— nearly vinegar, to be fair, but those had still been lean times — adding to the murky puddles polka-dotting the alley behind a tavern that left little to be desired. </p><p>Of course, maybe there’s an argument to be made that if Sylvain hadn’t nearly poisoned himself, Felix would’ve at least not been alone to make the mistake of momentarily confusing himself for a casanova. Then again, gods help him, maybe Sylvain would’ve encouraged him. He’d still been in stage two of their love affair back then: pitiful naivety. Sylvain had also been at the very depths of his own self-loathing — hence, perhaps, the horrible wine — so somehow he’s still convinced that an unexpected daughter hadn’t been the worst outcome.</p><p>“All’s well in Galatea, then?” Sylvain offers into the uncomfortable silence pooled between the three of them in the castle’s sunny conservatory.</p><p>Ingrid takes a long drink from her teacup. Her eyes don’t leave his own. He thinks its very possible that she’s slowly turning him to stone.</p><p>“The harvest are coming in well,” she finally answers. “Just last week we finished the final leg of the eastern aqueducts. Were you planning on telling me that you have a daughter, or was I just supposed to figure it out myself?”</p><p>Felix turns a very interesting shade of green over his own cup of untouched tea. For some reason Ingrid’s still not looking at the father in question, but Sylvain knows there’s something distasteful in correcting her — but then again it’s not like Eugenie’s got red hair nor a predisposition for poor decision making, so what the hell?</p><p>“It came as a surprise to all of us,” Sylvain attempts, forcing his lips into a placating smile as he says it. “Not unwelcome,” he quickly amends, “just unexpected.”</p><p>“Unexpected,” Ingrid blusters. “Five years, and you just learn about her now?”</p><p>Ingrid’s shoulders stiffen into a steel brace. <em>Oh no</em>, Sylvain realizes; that isn’t murderous rage glinting in her eyes, that’s <em>maternal instinct</em>, if maternal instinct meant Ingrid’s lifelong mother-birding over Felix.</p><p>“Ingrid,” Sylvain starts, but of course it’s impossible to stop a woman like Ingrid when she aims herself at a target and lets herself loose.</p><p>“I just think it’s convenient.” This is usually a phrase that’s used when a gossip hints at something that even they have the social graces to leave unsaid. Ingrid has never been a gossip, and has never been one for social graces, either. “Wars make widows,” she soldiers on.“What better father for their children than a duke? You’ve done enough for Faerghus already, you know. You don’t need to take responsibility for all of her lost children, too. Besides, it’s not like I’d put either of you at the top of a list like that. Write to Mercedes, for gods’ sake.”</p><p>“Now, hold on,” Sylvain starts, annoyance sparking at the pit of his gut at Ingrid’s suggestion that they can’t manage one wayward child.</p><p>“She’s my daughter,” Felix interjects. It’s the first thing he’s said since he grunted a welcome at Ingrid in the yard an hour prior. Sylvain hears Ingrid choke over her newest gulp of tea.</p><p>“Felix,” Ingrid counters. Felix sets aside his teacup and stares at it with enough intensity that Sylvain’s surprised it doesn’t shatter.</p><p>“Her mother was Anastasia Mateus. She was Count Mateus’ third-born daughter,” Felix tells them both matter-of-factly. Despite Felix’s trademarked lack of storytelling finesse, Sylvain still feels something sharp poking him in the side. It’s jealousy, he realizes, his stomach filling with guilt alongside that unpleasant pinching: and each word that turns the late Anya from a footnote into a full-fleshed person makes it worse. Sylvain swallows the gritty dredges of his cup and tries his best to ignore it.</p><p>“She was a guerrilla during Cornelia’s coup. Afterwards she followed the royal army to Enbarr. That’s where I met her.” He pauses, his eyes still tracing the gild rimming his teacup. Sylvain watches as he grips his fingers together in his lap, the ring finger of his right hand toying with the silver band on his left. “I didn’t know her well, but there’s no question that Eugenie is mine.”</p><p>“Gods,” Ingrid breathes in response. It’s a feat to leave her wordless, and yet here they are. Sylvain clears his throat.</p><p>“It’s fine,” he adds in a follow-up to what Felix has said. Ingrid doesn’t seem convinced, but there’s a look of quiet relief in Felix that leaves Sylvain feeling reassured. “Gerard needed something to do. She’s named him her squire, I think.” The idea makes him grin. “You’ll like her, Ingrid. She’s got the Fraldarius touch.”</p><p>Ingrid huffs at that, shaking her head.</p><p>“Count Mateus,” she wonders aloud. The man takes shape in Sylvain’s mind as well. They’d met all of them, once; the lost lords of Faerghus, most of them now buried with their firstborn sons beside them. Sylvain must have been young, which would have made the rest of them even younger, but he can still remember a shadow of Eugenie’s grandfather: broad-shouldered and boisterous and with a head of bright red hair.</p><p>Ingrid seems to remember this particular feature as well. Her eyes tick back from their brief study of the carpet to lock on Sylvain again. She raises one of her eyebrows. Sylvain shrugs. Everyone’s got a type.</p><p>Felix purses his lips for a reply, but he’s cut short by a knock at the door.</p><p>“The lady Eugenie,” comes Gerard’s polite introduction from out in the hall. <em>The lady Eugenie</em> had been meant to meet Ingrid with the two of them at her arrival, but at that point Gerard had informed them (with a far less genial voice) that she’d apparently been quite difficult to coax into her bath and was still covered with soap bubbles when Ingrid had finished at the stables. Apparently now she had at least been properly rinsed.</p><p>Felix flinches, although Sylvain can tell he hadn’t meant to, and rises from his chair. With four quick paces he’s at the door, swinging it open with a certain graceless indifference which will no doubt deflate Gerard’s passion for pageantry. And it does, of course, although the old man looks more occupied with the task of stopping Eugenie from pulling the blue ribbon from her hair than he does with the work of proper social protocol.</p><p>“Hello,” Felix blurts out.</p><p>“Master Fraldarius,” Gerard answers. It’s enough of a distraction for Eugenie to pull her hair loose. It spills against her shoulders, stringy in a way that Sylvain knows — recognizes from Felix’s own hair, in fact — that it’s still wet. He wonders what poor girl was tasked with doing up her hair. No doubt the staff had been thrilled by the idea of a new member of the fairer sex finally coming to the castle, but perhaps none of them had truly bargained for the cost of her having inherited so much of... well, Felix’s <em>felixness</em>.</p><p>Eugenie makes a point of not looking at her father as she stomps forward into the room. Gerard follows after, closing the door behind him and keeping his gaze with every moment on the little girl’s advance. Sylvain isn’t certain if it’s out of a protectiveness already fostered for his new ward, or if it has to do with the fact that their tea set is made from genuine Fhirdiad china.</p><p>“Oh,” Ingrid says in a whisper. She rises from her seat, taking a step closer towards Eugenie as the girl shuffles to a spot next to Felix’s abandoned chair. Then she kneels, her fingers fanned over her mouth as she no doubt takes in Eugenie’s cheery yellow dress already wrinkled in the skirts and with a loose thread torn free at the hem. “Hello there.”</p><p>Eugenie peeks over at her before becoming engrossed in scuffing one of her toes against the plush rug beneath their feet. </p><p>“It’s so lovely to meet you,” Ingrid carries on. “I’ve heard so much about you.”’</p><p>Sylvain’s lips twitch at the lie, although he’s hardly going to call her on it. It’s a nice thing to say, moreover, he supposes; something else to add to the babble as they all try to figure out just how on earth to lure the little girl into a two-sided conversation. So far none of them have been very successful at it, although Gerard has done the best in exchange for letting her batter his shins with whatever blunt object she manages to find (and despite a quite deliberate castle-wide effort to hide them).</p><p>“My name is Ingrid.”</p><p>Eugenie glances up at her again. This time her honey-drop eyes make a study of the woman instead of shyly glancing away. Sylvain wonders what she’s looking at — the green of Ingrid’s gaze, maybe, or the feather-shaped clip tucked into her short-cropped hair. Eugenie defies both predictions when she instead reaches forward to gingerly touch the laces hanging from the collar of Ingrid’s boyish riding clothes.</p><p>“Are you a knight?” Eugenie whispers. Ingrid’s lips break into a lopsided smile.</p><p>“I was,” she answers with a nod. Sylvain hears Eugenie draw in a tight breath. He looks over his shoulder at Felix and cocks a brow at him. Felix returns the gesture, his arms crossed over his chest as they all take silent bets on Ingrid’s attempt at making friends.</p><p>“Once,” Ingrid continues, “a long time ago.”</p><p>Eugenie mumbles something. Ingrid inches closer to her.</p><p>“What was that you said?”</p><p>Eugenie fiddles with her hair ribbon. Felix sighs. In the two weeks they’ve come to know her, this move is generally a sign that the girl has finished with her rapport. They’ve tried coaxing it out of her in a number of different ways, but it all ends the same: Eugenie hiding under something, or closing herself behind a door, or dashing off into the gardens with Gerard dutifully at her heels.</p><p>“...did you use a sword?” Eugenie says suddenly, quiet enough that Sylvain could mistaken it for the peep of a bird outside. Ingrid huffs a breath of laughter and shakes her head.</p><p>“No, little sweetling. I was a lancer.”</p><p>Eugenie frowns. It makes Ingrid smile brighter.</p><p>“Lancers are strong against swords, you know,” she continues, her voice a little sly. For a moment Sylvain’s convinced she’s resorted to her schoolgirl taunts directed most frequently in Felix’s direction. The challenge gets the same reaction out of Eugenie. The little duchess squares her shoulders and shakes her head.</p><p>“Nothing is better than a sword,” she counters in a brash but tiny voice. “Swords are the <em>best</em>.”</p><p>Ingrid laughs and stands, extending her hand in the girl’s direction and flexing her fingers invitingly.</p><p>“Come on, then. Why don’t you show me?”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Ingrid and Eugenie share six rounds of broom-handle sword fighting in the ring of the rose garden. The match ends in a draw. Sylvain thinks Eugenie would have challenged Ingrid to twenty more if they’d hadn’t been interrupted by Batty and Gerard, the two of them sharing a fat picnic basket between them as they ordered the quartet to lunch. Eugenie, famished from her little war, was the first to relent. She’d greedily snatched a clementine from Gerard and had allowed Batty to set a cucumber sandwich at her elbow as she took a seat on one of the little benches lining the outer circle of the garden. Felix dared to sit at the bench opposite her own, quietly picking at his own triangle of bread-and-cucumber as the two of them stared hotly at the first buds of the garden’s newest blooms. </p><p>Sylvain can’t help but feel like he’s watching two mirrors propped against each other as he spies on them from behind a hedge. Ingrid, fresh from her journey to return the brooms to their proper home in the kitchens, seems to come to the same realization.</p><p>“She’s his daughter,” Ingrid wonders aloud, quiet enough that the rest of them won’t hear. Sylvain grins and nods.</p><p>“Scary, isn’t it?”</p><p>“I can’t believe it,” Ingrid answers. She rubs at a bruise forming on the back of her hand. Sylvain remembers the bright flash from their duel just as Ingrid continues on with “she has a Crest, doesn’t she?”</p><p>“She does. The Crest of Fraldarius lives on.”</p><p>Ingrid makes another incredulous sound.</p><p>“Unbelievable.” She’s quiet for a moment. They both watch as Eugenie tears into the rind of her clementine, covering her lap in orange confetti as juice runs down her arms. “She looks just like him.”</p><p>“It’s the hair,” Sylvain offers. Ingrid wags her head.</p><p>“Not Felix. Glenn.”</p><p>“Shit,” Sylvain replies, and just as he realizes that she’s right. She’s got Felix’s eyes but it’s all Glenn otherwise: her face a little fuller and without the haughty angles that make Felix’s features so notably his own. “Talk about strong blood.”</p><p>Ingrid hums her agreement. It makes Sylvain feel a little sad. It’s bad enough that Eugenie’s mother is gone, but it would have been something of a conciliation if she’d at least looked a little like her. But where could Anya hide in all of that Fraldarius?</p><p>“I suppose it makes things easier,” Ingrid then suggests. He raises his eyebrows. “A heir,” she clarifies. She must be familiar with the idea enough herself, squared off as she is against her own advisors as each year finds her equally unmarried. <em>The Lone Maiden</em>, they’ve started to call her. Sylvain has a feeling that she likes the moniker. To be fair, it’s most often featured in stories about how impressive she was during the war, so it’s not like it’s a condemnation. </p><p>“I suppose it does,” Sylvain concedes. He readies himself for some sort of joke that dies on his tongue when he realizes she’s looking back at him with an awful lot of pity. “What’s that about?”</p><p>“Are you alright?”</p><p>Sylvain pats his chest, seeking out whatever invisible arrow she’s apparently watched pierce him without informing him of the matter.</p><p>“With Felix,” Ingrid adds, this time dryly. <em>Ah</em>. “I didn’t think... I didn’t know he had it in him.”</p><p>Sylvain laughs. He makes it just forlorn enough to signal that he’s taking her seriously. Her concern is sweet, after all, if perhaps a bit misguided.</p><p>“I know. Out of all of us, who would have thought?” He stretches his arms behind his head, hooking them at the wrists as he watches Felix pick his way through his sandwich. He hates cucumbers. Eugenie has already gutted her own and lined the offending green slices in a neat row along the edge of her seat.</p><p>“We’re alright,” he then promises her. “I don’t blame him for it, if that’s what you’re asking.”</p><p>“You never blame him for anything,” Ingrid then huffs. Sylvain nearly topples over as he realizes that she’s somehow landed on <em>his</em> side. He can’t remember the last time that he’d won her favor in a duel.</p><p>“Never,” Sylvain agrees. “I love him, you know? And I’ll love her too, when she lets us — or even if she doesn’t.” He scrunches his brow at that idea. “It might end up the latter.”</p><p>He makes a thoroughly unimpressive <em>guh!</em> sound when Ingrid suddenly lurches forward, stringing her arms around his middle as she drags him into a graceless embrace. His arms slip from their stretch to hover awkwardly over her shoulders.</p><p>“You big dumb idiot,” she says into his side. “When did you grow up?”</p><p>“I think we’re done growing, Ingrid,” Sylvain laughs.</p><p>He grips her into a sideways hug of his own. She’s not so different from him, really; once and forever charmed by pale skin and dark hair. Dimitri might rule over Fodlan, but in the north the duchy might as well be its own world. Maybe Eugenie will be the same — bewitching everyone to chase after her and keep her safe, and no matter how hard she tries to shoo them. It might just be a curse, even, but the sort that’s never seemed to him so bad.</p><p>“Yeah, well,” Ingrid sniffs. “I’m just glad your growing made you good.”</p><p>Sylvain hugs her a little closer and rests his cheek against the curve of her head. <em>Me too</em>, he could say, but it doesn’t really matter. The rest of everything in the sleepy garden — Batty humming some old song Sylvain remembers from the nursery, and the bees buzzing lazily in the first blossoms opening under the sun, and Felix placing a lobe neatly picked from his clementine as an offering at the end of his bench, with Eugenie shyly inching sideways to eventually snatch it up — says it for him.</p>
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